Ask Ray | Potential for elitization of the singularity

I was hoping for your views on the potential elitization of singularity that could lead to exacerbation of class, opportunity and economic division.

The ongoing quest for extending human life and artificially enhancing its quality testifies to our instincts for permanence and survival at all cost.

Technologically acquired supremacy breaks the well accepted paradigm that improved life span, physical and cognitive performance is possible only with practice, studious effort and a healthy lifestyle.

Enhancement made accessible to all holds potential to eliminate interpersonal rivalry, covetousness and even war, by equalizing life span and quality. All of us would be “first (beings) among equals.”

However, the more likely scenario is trenchantly divisive, with those who cannot afford such impressive enhancements being at risk of being outdone, outlived, if not exploited, by enhanced beings. A brave new world where talent and effort becomes obsolete and perfection is for sale is morally transgressive.

— Joseph Ting

Adjunct Associate Professor, Clinical Research Methods and Prehospital Care
School of Public Health and Social Work, Queensland University of Technology

Professor Ting,

There is an approximately 50% deflation rate for all information technology. That is why mobile phones were only affordable by the wealthy 15 years ago and now are dramatically better yet very inexpensive, so much so that there are approximately six billion cell phones in the world and about a billion smart phones.

Technology starts out affordable only by the rich at a point where it does not work very well. By the time a technology is perfected it is almost free. Even physical devices will become almost free with the advent of 3D printing.

— Ray Kurzweil

Ray,

Thanks! I take your well made point with the analogy of mobile telephone adoption across the world.

Increasing affordability of new technology such as the mass adoption of mobile phones around the world, including in low resource settings, is not capable of narrowing the persistent gradient in the quality of smartphones widely sold in advanced economies compared with cheaper versions that an average consumer in sub-Saharan Africa has access to.

Compare the latest Apple iPhone with a Nokia mobile phone that cannot access the internet. Furthermore, in low development countries, web enabled data access networks may be very slow with limited coverage, regardless of the quality of one’s smartphone.

For artificial enhancement of function or physiology, this gradient will obstinately remain. Although the quality of both the best contemporary bio-physiological enhancement and its low end, out of date version are both expected to improve over time, competitiveness, covetousness, prestige and income driven pricing is likely to maintain a chasm of quality between what the super-rich and the average punter is able to afford.

This is going to potentiate inequities in access to the best, widening society’s socio-economic divide.

Across the African continent, improvements in mobile phone technology and greater access to the internet are spurring new innovations in the tech sector. Special correspondent Martin Seemungal reports from Kenya, the East African nation leading the trend.

Comments (167)

DevilDocNowCiv
There is no ‘choice’ given to the poor. It’s not ‘an involuntary change to chaos’. The local tyranny is bombed back to the stone age, destroying infrastructure, transport, police, etc. (in other words – a power vacuum). Chaos ensures – no fire dept., no food in the shops or running water. Mob rule and local Warlords make normal life dangerous (in other words – a power vacuum). It’s between bad or worse. Tyranny is bad, chaos is worse.

Sorry to rain on your parade but Americans are not regarded as ‘elite’ any more than others in the Western world are. Maybe in the ‘60’s. A very short-sighted and ignorant view. Any respect that America gets is due to their military projection of power or their potential resource contribution. These are fading.

Have details of the Singularity been specified? I was under the impression that it was coming but any details over the event horizon were unknown. Otherwise what’s the point? Just the same old, same old.

In the human history, the following pattern has been found repeating: old technology – hybrid technology – new technology.
For the coming future of ours it means: human being only – hybrid AI – AI only.
Now, we are discussing the hybrid phase.

I get that. And so…
This doesn’t appear to have any relevance to post-singularity behavior. It’s accurate enough when reflecting the development cycle of pre-singularity tech (it’s likely that this is the path AI development will take) but to list it as post-singularity druthers seems inappropriate. By definition, post-singularity actions are unknown. You can’t plan or specify post-singularity behavior. Maybe I am missing something.

Wrecks: I do not think that you are missing anything, you are just wrongly assuming that I know what will follow in the post-singularity period. I do not know. I have never stated that I know. The above article is about the time of approaching Singularity. And I assume that the future transitional period (a “handover to AI”) may be an extended period because the top players in the human race will not give up voluntarily. (The film “The Code of Pyramids” suggested that an advanced knowledge may have been intentionally destroyed – some 36 000 years ago – by the then top human players – so that the human race could not advance further).

In the future, I think, the critical decision concerning the “handover to AI” should be done collectively (by the whole human race with an approximately equalized IQ) rather than by a few strange personalities who has managed to acquire the most power on this planet. Today in the U.S.A., these top players at least tolerate the life-style of 1750s, I mean Amish. However, will a 90 percent of superfluous workers (unemployed from the market economy point of view) be tolerated in the future?

m.pivoda,
You make a provocative point about bible teaching; are you going for old or new testament? While I and many others share your biblical interest, in this country (that once could be defensibly categorized as a Christian country) many would be bemused and disregard any religous element. The effort to tell anyone that their augmentation will be limited so that all will be the same will have this result (I humbly submit): most will submit to the prohibition of a maximal degree of augmentation. Some will not. Prohibition authorities will either throw up their hands, as some communities do with some crimes today, or come down hard as we did with our alcohol prohibition and do with our drug war. Just as we didn’t stop all use of either booze or drugs, we won’t stop “excessive” augmentation. Further, once many have evaded prohibition limits, others who were obeying will now either join them or at least work to loosen augmentation restrictions. But this presupposes a group of AI augmented folks acting as enforces/cops/judges. The most important thing to me is that I want some one, or group, that has Rays outlook in the lead. Given quasi-luddite and leveller groups in America and Europe, we may end up being augmented to a level allowed by our beneficial, paternal Chinese “helpers.”

We have no record of any society where interfering busybodies-or worse-didn’t try to rule or but in to others’ lives. The “worse” is why many groups welcomed tyrants as opposed to the chaos of no governmental order at all. We have recent view of this in Syria, where new reports note that some resident of an IS occupied town resent American bombing, as they prefer even the unpleasantly harsh IS rule over total chaotic non-government.
The only way that any mild, kind, least oppressive government could exist in a post AI-human augmented world that precedes SIngularity is if some people who have that view of life have the augmentation first so as to protect the rest of us from the worst of us (IS, Putin, Tiananmen Square massacring Chinese communist’s, etc).

The residents had their opinions, and I only found out via the conservative side of the net, wherein a reported relayed their comments. It was our sporadic bombing of ISIS, and in this particular town, it caused a bad situation that could be understood and worked with (ISIS) to become worse (more random destruction via the bombing, ISIS fleeing leaving a situation of dog-eat-dog with no harsh ISIS justice to restrain the toughest thugs. When faced with chaos, history shows us that the poorest among us prefer a tyrant (such as ISIS ) who will enforce some kind of law and order.
Until the AI augmented period preceding the Singularity (Rays suggestion; it makes sense when I read it in his essays section (first essay) as I have read a similar premise in more than one science fiction novel) we will have to survive the current, longstanding dog-eat-dog social system that has endured as long as historical record reaches.

I wasn’t clear enough-the bombing was micro-targeted to avoid embarrassing collateral damage to Syrian locals, unlike our fairly casual death dealing via drones where we accept that those around our targets are having a very unlucky day. In the Syrian case, the locals weren’t complaining about the bombing per se, but the fact that the bombing caused a removal for a period of the IS local rulers. In that time, chaos rather than tyranny reigned-and people have long preferred tyranny to the often more violent and ugly chaos of anarchy.

I’m glad you think its true that the poor throughout history have prefered tyrants to chaos, but thats hardly convenient, and it doesn’t expedite any policies or programs. Its an example to us as we consider elitism in a post Singularity world, and we fret about income inequality in America and Europe, the view of life in some parts of the world has a much older perspective.

They don’t prefer ‘tyrants to chaos’, they prefer order to chaos (tyrant in this context = order). You can’t consider “elitism in a post Singularity world” or “fret about income inequality in America and Europe”. By definition, a post-singularity world is an unknowable quantity. It is unlikely to fit conveniently into your ‘elitism’.

Wrecks,
While the idea doesn’t fit the view of many in the softer world we live in, the choice given to many of the worlds poor isn’t simply “order” over here, or step over here for “chaos.” Its sometimes an involuntary change to chaos, or the takeover of a tyrant. It isnt that the poor vote with their feet to flee a nice country to prefer a tyrant. Its a simple historical fact, and current history in some places, that many poor in fact do choose tyranny over chaos.
The unknowable post SIngularity world will be known to both of us in thirty years or so, I hope. per Rays timeline. And I’m elite? Well, sure-to some, all Americans are.

Here’s why I suspect that will not work: Intelligence is partly personality. The brain is given instructions by the will of the person, and those instructions determine how the brain creates its architecture. Brain power will prove to be just like money: Equalize everybody’s net worth, and in a short time the rich will have all the money again.

Don’t know what Bible preaching you’re referring to, but Jesus said the opposite: “To those who have, more will be given. To those who have not, even what little they have will be taken away.”

He also advised slaves to be obediant. Everyone can interpret Bible quotes to defend almost any position-and I think your point is valid, with one caveat. Reading Rays 1st essay in his essay section, he makes the point I have run into in science fiction-once changed, we will have both a much greater-possibly 100%-number of the population at a level we would agree as very bright. GIven that some would be at higher levels, and superabundance that takes a lot of imagination to consider in context of a functioning society, the bright will probably be able to console themselves quite well even though some have more. I say that considering myself; one of the retired, middle or lower middle economic class, I have enough to truly satisfy me materially, and truly don’t resent or envy those with more (some of whom I know, and others I certainly know of). If I can deal pretty easily with this inequality, I think all AI-augmented humans and beyond will be able to.

I was not trying to back up a position with my Jesus quote. I just thought it was relevant to the conversation to whatever extent any biblical reference might be.

I agree with you 100% that when people have their needs and many of their wants met, there is no stumbling block to happiness if some have a great deal more. (Unless they’re next-door neighbors, of course!)

To mbreagan@pacbell.net
1. Be sure, I fully realize a major weakness of my suggestion above (The people with a lower IQ will receive a more powerful brain implants, while the people with a higher IQ will receive a less powerful brain implants). Up to now, I have said nothing about this idea practical implementation. History shows us, even an excellent idea can be turned into the very opposite act, if the implementation aspects are not considered. To succeed, we have to specify exactly the transition phase, it means, how to get from the point “A” to the point “B”.

2. As for Bible, true, I am not a specialist. However, I remember the following quote: “Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven”. Am I right?
3. Thank you for this reminder of yours: “Intelligence is partly personality.”

1. Good points. But what if we found out that human performance is mostly motivational anyway? And what if we found we could raise the motivation of an individual by administering a small, albeit unpleasant electrical shock to the person every 5-10 minutes? “That’s all it takes to be a top performer, folks! Who wants to sight up?” I would argue that that already IS how it is. That to a large degree, the people who most want to be the top performers will go through whatever it takes to find a way. But your model does have one huge advantage over the current situation: Everybody would be a candidate…they’d all have the potential to be a top performer if they also had the motivation.

2) Yes, I’ve read that translation and also that the meek will inherit the earth. I don’t know about the Kingdom of Heaven, but the meek will definitely not inherit the earth, unless that refers to the cockroaches after some high level of radioactivity kills all the reptiles, birds and mammals.

We are already in an age of abundance where anything one desires is effectively “free”. The problem is this is only the case for the top 1% of humans. Most everyday items are of trivial expense to rich persons. Everyone cannot live in a large masion, dirve a corvette, and have a superyacht parked at the marina regardless of how much abundance there is. Many humans currently struggle just to find the basics needed to survive another day, and many fail each day. Meanwhile elites enjoy the current age of abundance. Can’t see how this could ever change…

I entirely agree with this statement. The BIGGEST human tragedy is that most of the suffering in the world has already been solved!!! While us wealthy folks are worrying about extending our lives past some cancer we might get at age 80, there are 100s of thousands of kids dying right now based on lack of nutrition that could be solved with table scraps from our dinners. I’m actually not that socially conscious but this is pretty clear — abundance doesn’t flow as it should.

Nature limits the population growth of every species on the planet by means of starvation. It doesn’t take much exponential math to realize we will never be exempt from this, at least until we choose to control population growth in another way.

Don’t get me wrong, I want to feed all the children. But facing reality means realizing this problem has nothing to do with table scraps, or the fact that some have extra food and some have none.

Compared to just 100 years ago, we are all abundant. Diseases are being conquered, water, air and food are safer, education is universal, “work” is far easier, entertainment is ubiquitous and even remote tribes have access to the world’s knowledge. Most would not want a mansion. Believe me, it takes a toll and changes you (not for the better).

Those who don’t have 8 cars, a mansion, masseuse, closets of clothes and industrial refrigerators are worse off only if things are the criterion. I’m quite satisfied with my possessions and am not worried that Jones or Smith have more that I do. No worry – less stress.

Ray Kurzweil was wise enough not to express his opinion outside the field of his expertise. As we know, Ray excels in technology, not in Sociology and Political Science.
As I have spent a considerable part of my life time under a different social-economic system, the real socialism, and as I witnessed the transition from socialism to capitalism (having seen ruthless capitalists arise from the former nominal communists), I dare to predict the future: the technological trend toward Singularity has to lead to a further widening society’s socio-economic divide or even to a worse scenario (it means to a state, when a useless part of the divide, may be erased totally).
If you are unable to enforce a full citizen rights against the power of money now, do not expect this to happen in the more lucrative future. Metaphorically speaking, if you place a tiger overnight into a butcher shop, you cannot expect to find your meet untouched there in the morning.

I came from Ukraine long ago. Going back was like a trip to the past – I forgot my Russian (what we spoke). At some point I realized that the reason some have less is not because others have more but many factors – intelligence, looks, family, drive, nationality, curiosity.

“Poor” is a relative term. Few would trade place with the poor in Ukraine. If housing, food, clothes, entertainment and health care are virtually free, why accumulate more money? We are a rewards-based species which is why Marxism was such a failure. The question of how we reward smarter, harder working or more inventive folks when money is no longer required is far more important than who has what.

First, Ray Kurzweil has to find and silence (suppress) a gene for greed in any human being (irrespective is he/she comes from U.S.A. or Ukraine), and only then we can expect a smooth transition in time of the coming Singularity (possibly already around 2045).

There is probably no “gene of greed”, only an illusion of need which being perceived as natural and “real” translates into fulfilling the need and all action and behavior. And mere understanding the working of human mind will allow to see the illusion and be able to alter it either naturally (easy scenario) or via hacking (harder one). Therefore All problems possibly coming from tech of which human AI will play the dominant role, will be solved by themselves, that is – will never appear.

No problem that humanity bothers itself with will matter in that world, neither tomorrow or ever. There will be other problems from a higher level, which we can’t appreciate until we reach it, although they will bare totally different “emotional” color, since we will know the truth that “there are NO [real] problems at all”. There is nothing in the desert, and no man needs nothing. Can you read this and smile happily?

There is no ‘gene for greed’. It’s a cultural/training phenomenon. In my observations, beyond a certain point, money has less of an influence and self-esteem is more predominant. In this band, you would find a strong vocational strand exercising skills and providing service rather than self-enrichment.

For example:
Doctors without Borders, charity organisations, etc. Highly skilled people within these organisations (and others) don’t get paid enough (if at all) considering the risks they take. They are not motivated by greed but by their perceived self image. So even though a job may pay less, as long as it meets the criteria for dignity and a comfortable life style, money loses its power as a motivator – excluding high-maintenance spouses applying pressure (of course).

I respectfully recommend (library checks, and internet checks to “look inside the book are starts) by the celebrated, late economist Milton Friedman called “Money Mischief.” Its’ fairly short, covers several points, and starts by recalling an old south sea island culture that used a certain rare kind of rock, which when carved into a large wheel shape, served as money. We and much of the world used to have a gold, silver or bimetallist system for money. Now we use paper with no metal back-up. My point here is that even these low population, low-tech folk found value in going to the trouble of using money rather than pure barter. It helps more efficiently allow us to make deals with each other in “pursuing happiness” in our own unique, kooky ways. When “Uncle Joe” in Russia wasn’t starving Ukrainians by confiscating their grain to sell on the open market, he was allowing the Soviet people to use Rubles after some consideration of eliminating money. The reason? Like the islanders know, like the Spartans who used Iron bars while other Greeks used gold and silver coins knew, money of some kind is useful. If some philosophers who “know better” eliminate money, it will be regenerated in some way until a reformer brings it back-util, of course, we get a Singularity or some other approximation of individual awsome command of energy and tech. So we do a work around to deal with each other, such as barter? Money may vanish-but I predict it won’t be in my lifetime (unless Rays Singularity comes before I go, of course).

Well said. All people are not created equal, if they were were would all be a genius (or still living in caves). The real problem in the world is that the poor reproduce much too fast, so we can never catch up. Advanced countries should reduce immigration and make contraceptives a required part of foreign aid. Only with population under control can the world hope to spread some of the wealth. Genius is relatively rare but what can you do with 5 billion (assuming not all would become one) of them if technology changes that?

Babble, here are two comments:
1. No doubt, people are not equal from the very nature, only by law (which does not correspond to the given reality, of course).
2. Ask Ray Kurzweil to answer this question: “Can current exponential technologies outpace the population growth, and thus keep the existing merits-based differentiation within the human society?”

you don’t need to ask Ray.
Technological growth can easily easily outpace biological population growth because it happens on an extremely short time scale. When machines start learning they do it very rapidly. Exponential population growth is insignificant compared to machine calculation and iteration.
The question is really, “When will machine intelligence and calculating speed be available to directly augment the human brain, as opposed to supplementing it through “media?”
Today we have to read, study, memorize and practice in order to “learn.” At some point we will plug in to neuronetworks that augment our intelligence with machine capabilities.

Some kind of “learning machine” is a long desired goal of futurists, myself,and other science fiction fans. And its getting closer all the time, because like hair loss and sex drive solutions, there are lots of eager customers salivating for insta-knowledge. I can see research teams with multiple related degrees who couldn’t have managed those credentials with the current time and money demands, getting them because they had the $9.95 and enough raw “g” to be able to process the “download.” And I can imagine such “super” teams of researchers making the leap to AI-linkup

As has been shown in the past the best contraception is education, the decrease of religion influence in society and general material prosperity. None of your suggestions will help most of them are counter productive. If the wealthy part of the world would give fair access to resources and information to the rest of the world reproduction rates would come down very fast, a lot faster than any of your actions. Problem is the wester part of northern hemisphere has blown their credibility long time ago by applying actions that only benefit them in the long run (securing access to resources) so the others side don’t trust us anymore with good reason. It will take a very long time to repair that damage.

Why are they counterproductive suggestions? Your point about education being the best contraception is well taken, but for parents to lavish a decent education on their children requires a (much) lower birthrate so they can afford it instead of fleets of ill educated, superstitious, ignorant and poverty-stricken children who grow up to be criminal adults. Babble seems to have put forward good, pragmatic (but non-PC) suggestions – “Advanced countries should reduce immigration and make contraceptives a required part of foreign aid.”

I can identify with your religious influence point.

“ Problem is the wester part of northern hemisphere has blown their credibility long time ago by applying actions that only benefit them in the long run (securing access to resources) so the others side don’t trust us anymore with good reason. It will take a very long time to repair that damage.”

Well simply contraception is pointless without education as they will just not use it unless you force it down their throat by deluding into their food/water supply. Not a great idea. Stopping immigration stops exactly those people getting access to better education and material prosperity. So you just going to trap them in their current situation. The only thing that really stops immigration is improving the situation where they are living right now.

Babble,
The idea you present that some consider too mean, that is correctly labelled as un-PC-of objecting to an unproductive segment of a given society reproducing too much-is as old as Victorian era Galton, who presciently predicted IQ studies by guessing that societal leaders of Britain, Europe, and tiny tribal societies were smarter than those they ruled. He guessed that over time smarter people had worked their way to the top and tried to mate with other smart people. He noted that in primitive societies the less successful died younger than the more successful and had many of their children die young. He worried, as did many who read his writings, that at his time society was now keeping the “less competent and intelligent” alive, fed and clothed while the British and European “leader class” were breeding less, and the less. With food and clothing provided where they would have died without it, the “follower class” were breeding more. Babble, you have caught Galtons’ meme as it has filtered down to us with your words “..the poor reproduce much too fast, so we can never catch up.”
Fortunately, we don’t have to engage in Hitler’s genocide camps, or Margaret Sanger’s’ tricky abortion centers located in places where she decided “undesirables” were “reproduce (ing) much too fast.” While we can’t afford to import the Obama-chosen level of immigrants now, we can reliably predict that in the near future we will be able to afford some degree of living help to all who can survive, and with modern techniques of analysis and management, can help those who are able to contribute what they can to all with their creative or plodding productive efforts. I know that in my military career, I was both creative and plodding. Even plodders can contribute, as I have seen for myself.
Hopefully the world will retain one or more superpower that can maintain the current north American, Australian, Singaporean, South Korean-oh heck-the current western world concepts of acceptable freedom-available to many. If so, then those many will have a chance to be among the first be augmented, and can serve as handmaidens to escort humanity into the augmented age that leads to “Singularityville.”

So, just to be clear (there was much verbal static) – you are suggesting that the 1st to be augmented (handmaidens) will help the augmented ‘challenged’ as long as they subscribe to ‘correct’ thinking? This sounds like an Ayn Rand nightmare.

Have you gone off your medication? Do they let you out without adult supervision? Have you escaped your handlers?

Tracking on Rays 1st essay in his essay section, AI augmentation will precede the SIngularity. I hope, Wrecks, that I am wrong in thinking that what I consider dangerous people will have the opportunity to use the AI augmented stage of advancement to indulge what they consider now the smartest course. Its 2014, and we have a contrast between a politically correct Dem and slightly less politically correct Repub view of life, while Chinese leaders see the smartest course as building up new landmass around the reef and island property of other asian nations so as to make these properties their own, and Putin has grabbed bits and pieces of various nations that used to be ‘provinces’ of the old Soviet Union-which passing he has mourned as a dark point of history. I don’t claim to know how this will work out, but don’t see how the progress Ray describes necessarily maintains our moral view. By “our moral view,” for instance, while you have shown disrespect for me, you haven’t denounced me as a non-person or threatened me with violence. Broadly speaking, we share a willingness to debate with the understanding that bandyage may require a think skin. The non-person thing we only know from the novel 1984; students of Soviet russia know it as a standard tool of that government, the exposing of which was part of the point of Orwell’s’ novel. I dont know if Ray has considered this, or if he has and concludes that “the good guys” will be able to hold out against any “bad guys” until we can get to the Singularity.

No, I’m real. The skin is thick enough not to mind the bandyage. Here we both are on Rays site; we can communicate, and your disagreement with my post(s) shows that while that communication may not be the best, it can at least take place. That isnt a world standard. Other parts of the world that express power, authority, and durability literally bludgeon opposition, and verbally do so when not swinging clubs. Its those folks that (hopefully) we will have some handmaidens to protect us from, and show us how to “step up” to the Singularity. Kinda like the Romans in Britain, without the all the enslaving and mass murder.

More fundamentally, we are going to transition from an economy based upon scarcity, to an economy of abundance. Therefore, the value of each individual will change from now being a worthless eater in a Malthusian sense, to being an asset to be revered. The Singularity will be more worthwhile for every member of our population, since they won’t cost any us any valuable resources, but will potentially give us value and add to our diversity.

The history of civilization as we know it such a march, not purely steadily but steadily over time, from scarcity to more and more abundace amid more or less scarcity. As elites worked out how to ensure themselves some security with their possessions and rights, over time these were extended to the worker bees under their control. This can be seen in late medieval England’s Magna Carta or modern China’s allowing many outside of Party membership to generate and keep some profit and general possessions. That you don’t see that much, much more abundance is possible is not the case, I’m sure. Perhaps the problem is that you think that greater abundance will be less “equally distributed” if and when it comes about. I can almost guarantee that it will, as this is, historically, the only way it does come about. But we are not at all on a theoretical, unreal basis to think that as we progress to a Singularity future, further tech advances and business adaptations will generate more wealth. To a great degree, we are already currently in an economy of abundance in much of the world, for much of the world population. The rest that have a large degree of scarcity are dealing with the stresses of societal adaptation to it with crime, war, and other tragedy that is to some degree mitigated by GO’s and NGO’s from the abundance economies of the world.

There are not enough resources on planet Earth to allow the world abundance on the scale America enjoys (irrespective of any ‘advances’). I note that you carefully ensure the preservation of the status quo,”…further tech advances and business adaptations will generate more wealth.” This is straight from the textbook on “Why Capitalism is the Best Ideology” seasoned with Ayn Rand. Don’t forget about Reagan’s “trickle down” economics.

Thank you. There is no single resource, but this site (Kurzweil) is significant. I was born and reside on the East coast of Africa so I concede that I may be isolated from mainstream thinking. The “not enough” status is the result of intuition, observation and the opinions of the rest of the world. A prime factor in the “not enough” issue is a documentary movie “The Age of Stupid”. Check it out.

Please note that when Chinas Oligarchical leadership allowed a great deal of capitalism to exist, the standard of living has exploded. True, the Oligarchs haven’t met the socialist promise of their Communist Party ideology to ensure equitable lives for workers, because the only way to do that to some degree disincentives free enterprise. Nonetheless, the standard of living and overall morale is booming. Until further worldwide advance, and space and higher-tech planetbound development expands, there wont be enough energy or material wealth for developing populations to enjoy-at some point a repetition of Chinese success will stress the limit of planetary resources. But unless the Chinese Oligarchs or Russian Oligarchs risk bigger conflicts than pushing around smaller neighbors and stealing their territory-and we have some variant of a world war involving the US-humanity will probably reach that higher level of development. From there, the Singularity results-or precedes it, and then hopefully provides more for all rather than a Frankenstein-like result that some fear.

It seems (I am only talking about Africa – that is my concern) that US capitalism has been a dismal failure. The “standard of living has NOT ‘exploded’. Pouring money (as aid) into African countries only serves to enrich the corrupt few at the top, the country continues to suffer. Chinese aid (suck it up) is in the form of infrastructure. Clinics, schools, etc. with Chinese troops wielding spades so that the lazy and entitled locals can’t stuff it up. You can’t steal infrastructure and squirrel it away into a Swiss bank account (like US aid). The best system (for Africa) is a hybrid of socialism and capitalism. Like the kibbutz system in Israel or the socialist intensive systems in some Northern European countries.

However, we are losing focus. This is a technical site and shouldn’t be used for debating ideology.

I said China’s economy has exploded, not Africa’s. My points about ideology were debating yours, not trying to redirect from Tech. Tech advances tied to sound business practices, and absolutely not supporting kloptocrats running many African countries are vital to helping the poor of the world approach to some degree the lifestyle they see on video and hear about from friends who visit more developed countries. You are right, with the current world development we cant “bring everyone up” to the US level of lifestyle, but its the US and the rest of the developed world that will develop and pay for the tech that will allow some kind of material progress for the worlds vast number of poor people. Tech, tech tech.

I am not Wrecks but I would say it is fossil fuels if you exclude the economic side of extracting and the market dynamics then there are probably enough to keep everyone on this planet going at the same consumption level as the US for a decade maybe two if you really use all of them including coal, but not sure if we really want to do that. It doesn’t sound very wise to me.

I believe the gap between affordability and performance is closing. Today, the best mass market computers are coming close in performance with the best corporate/ government computers. Back in the early 80′s, the computers that the average american could afford was a lot worse than the computer owned by governments and corporations. In the 50-60′s, only the most powerful conglomerates and governments owned computers.

I believe as technology advances, the narrower the gap between the best hardware and software available for global organizations and private individuals.

I believe that’s what Apple meant with their 1984 Super Bowl campaign ad.

A major problem I see with Ray’s response is that the proper analogy to Singularity tech is not cell phones, but something more like hip-replacement surgery.

Q) How do you equip a poor African farmer with a cell phone?
A) Hand her one.

Q) How do you equip a poor African farmer with cybernetic brain implants?
A) Expensive surgery requiring high-tech medical infrastructure that might as well be on another planet, and is light-years beyond her economic reach.

There are plenty of technologies that have been around for decades, but are still too expensive for the global poor to afford, and likely to remain so: heart transplants, cryonics, intercontinental jet travel, the air-conditioned suburban house, etc.. Singularity-tech stuff like brain implants, robot bodies, genetic enhancements and so forth are not purely “digital” and subject to Moore’s Law. They also require delicate tinkering with the human biological substrate, lots of energy and physical resources, or both.

This means that Ray’s projection of Singularity tech becoming democratized is not any more likely than the technology of personal Gulfstream jets or yachts becoming democratized. Assuming these technologies pan out, it’s more likely to result in a Marvel Comics universe, where a handful of very fortunate people have super powers, and the rest of us just have to run and hide whenever they have a brawl.

That is, if we leave the question of who gets access to them up to the Great God Market (profits be upon hir Invisible Hand).

Well, it’s an old question and one that Ray has answered many times before, but judging from the number of comments on this thread, one that still doesn’t fail to engender interest. As for me, I’m far more concerned with whether the Singularity will actually get here (at least in my lifetime) and I’m willing to allow things to sort themselves out from there. After all, if there’s no Singularity, then all this is a moot question anyway…

Your second note did not present a counterpoint. It merely pointed out that a certain situation was currently at a certain phase. It was as if you had the underlying assumption that in this one area, technology would stagnate, and yet you did not give any reason this would be so.

There has always been a war between intelligence and stupidity. That war has always been an arms race. We can now see that intelligence will inevitably win, and you call into question the morality of that? My morals are different.

Hi Ray did not clarify the question remains super elitization of the singularity (SeS). I think that in the last potential elitization will differ by hundreds of orders of magnitude. What do you think Ray?
Is it time ellit(elitization ) not gone forever?

I am with Ray, but some of your comments and rebuttals are pivotal to enrich the discussion and improve our preparedness for the Singularity and the Oneness. In the Singularity the elite will be the kinder and the most generous.

Sorry Ray but no, your answer is not good enough.
“Eventually” the poor will catch up and will be able to afford it. This could take 40-50 years and in the meantime generations can die out, or simply be outcompeted by their – not brighter – but richer fellow humans with cerebral implants giving them an incredible edge.
This capitalist, monetary , for profit system MUST DIE before the singularity can come into full effect. Otherwise it will jsut be a tool for the rich. not even a strong AI will truly be free because it will be taught and SERVE the powers that be.

Some rich, both legally rich and certainly some rich gangsters will predate where they can. Current (today) news about Chinese and other hackers being able to access part of our vital electrical and water infrastructure via hacking is a precursor of the high-tech risk from the world of bad folks in general, whicher boogie-man any one of us may be focused on right now. But believing that we can avoid the risks of this scary (not to you, Sir, but certainly to Elon Musk and some others) by not pursuing the technology must be accompanied by the reality that others will pursue it. Along with some evil member of those tricky 1%ers, some like myself (hardly a rich man, I am a retired enlisted guy) would endeavor to pursue and teach traditional Judeo-Christian ethics, without insisting on any explicit religious compliance. A version of the marketplace of ideas, with one of the most available enhancements being an intelligence enhancement product that would give so many more of an assist in life than the most robust TAMP card or section 8 housing voucher.

You are assuming a system where the values of society stay the same and the super rich (with their cerebral implants) have an unfair and exploitative advantage and impose their selfish and grasping values as if nothing in outside society has changed. I would venture that the ‘incredible edge’ will not be used for trivialities such as that kind of exploitation and society would evolve (although I am not ruling out exploitation, just not what Jensen fears). There are much more relevant and life-threatening problems to solve.

FIrst, not to pry, but I hope I am not mis-addressing you. Second, no, I’m not assuming about society. America, to channel Sarah, is very “changey.” Society around the world is both changing and becoming sclerotically blocked up with entrenched interests. In dictatorships with a democratic veneer, like russia, the plutocrats contest. In democracies like America and “Euroland” multiple voices-NGO’s, GO’s-sound off, riot, pay to play, you name it. Any given millionaire like a Koch has a corresponding Soros somewhere. My faith is in myself and my nuanced desire to help some, and the known (to me) quantity that many others are so oriented. Just as today, with actual slavery still in effect in many countries (including here) bad folks will do horrible evil. Stopping advances in technology in the belief that we are better off in the here-and-now is not truly an option. And, when the urge to curse the rich hits-sing out! I don’t offer sarcasm, but rather celebrate our freedom to express. Yet the remnants of our free enterprise system are still being expressed by both legal and illegal immigrants, as well as “native” Americans. So an immigrant named Sergey Brin can scare both Americans and Euro’s with his Googleistic plans, and an immigrant Elon Musk can take his Pay-Pal fortune and publicly ponder the threat posed by AI, and both employ many Americans and foreigners. Are they evil rich? While it is anyones right, per American tradition, to ponder this or any idea, it is certainly arguable that Locke, Smith, et al were correct in their economic ponderings and Marx was tragically wrong. Thus, rich be not automatically bad (An amazing 2014-that point has to be defended in a public forum in America. Chagey indeed). The singularity will be yet another change, and if folks who follow a doctrine that rails against the rich, while themselves are plutocrats (Putin, Pelosi, et al) gain access to the Singularity first, perhaps we will have much to fear. But I have childhood science fiction dreams at the base of my thoughts, and spontaneously want the singularity on reading about it. On reflection, I recall science fiction that has addressed the idea with intelligent plotting. I suspect game theory or some other developed, checkable scientific field exists that can suggest the safest way to get there from here. In my own imagining, it would be the AI, along with a 3D printer for metal and biology and an automated assembly system that would be closed off from direct web access to prevent hacking me (!!) or getting electronic versions of prions just by bad internet luck. The web interface would be an “airlock,” in that a cache of incoming data would come in, be checked, then a copy would be created on my side of the “door” that copied what was supposed to be there, but wouldn’t have the hidden “poison.” I am confident that it can’t be that easy, but am also confident that if I close myself off from the Net with the AI, we/I can come up with a way to stay safe. Say a quantum input checker?

That is absolutely correct, Jensen. In order to make the argument (rather than just the bald statement) that “eventually the poor will catch up” one must at least describe the mechanism by which they will catch up (taking into account all potential contrary forces) and preferably also show any _current_ indications of technological advancement being an economically equalizing force.

The present behaviour of the rich give us very little reason to believe those who are first to benefit from bleeding edge technologies will care about implementing any redistributive policies in a hypothetical future where their living conditions will be even farther removed from the living conditions of the poor and their interests accordingly removed from the interests of the poor.

The simple fact is that unless the reduction of economic inequality is established and pursued as an end in itself _before_ any technological singularity happens, it’s likely to never happen at all.

It always baffles me that people can’t extrapolate. Firstly, the description of the mechanism by which the poor “eventually catch up” is contained within the entire body of Kurzweil’s work. Read The Singularity is Near.

Secondly, your argument and implication are essentially that the rich will forever outpace the poor, and thus the poor will never “catch up”, and thus will always be exploited — gross assumptions at least as egregious as what you imply Ray is making. You have failed to consider the social consequences of the disruptive technologies themselves. When 3D printing occurs on the nanoscale and thus food, shelter and clothing (that is, human survival needs) are available to all at no cost, the monetary system which creates the disparity today will no longer serve any purpose. Thus, the equalization. The poor “catch up” because the concept itself becomes obsolete.

Kurzweil makes simple logical extrapolations based on data trends, and the logical conclusion is the Singularity. Mr Ting’s challenge-posed-as-question seeks to undermine Kurzweil’s thesis by sidestepping its most basic assertion and conclusion. Sorry, but Kurzweil’s answer is clear from a body of work. I don’t think he needs to offer any more detailed response to this pseudo-intellectual nonsensical non-question.

For those who dont follow the logic of the material abundance that will be possible with nanoscale 3D printing, your point is still made by the current circumstances. Even in this poor main-street level Obama economy, some people can amass enough money to start a small buisness. In contrast to the challenge of how the downtrodden will ever catch up to the rich, half of these starts fail. For more opportunities for the downtrodden to catch up, big corporations sometimes fail. If our Fed Gov hadn’t saved them after the ’08 housing bubble burst recession, several big banks and one or two big insurance companies would have failed. The rich aren’t immune from becoming poor, and many examples are known of immigrants becoming successful, and some very successful-as well, of course, as born Americans doing so. So, even if someone thinks that society will crumble into some french or russian style revolution if we cant get that “magic nano 3D printer” up and running, they can be consoled that the picture isnt so simple and two dimensional, with evil rich and deserving, downtrodden poor.

Integration of physically or psychologically impaired labourers into the workforce

I am an Information scientist / educator and work in the technical education of adult blind people in Switzerland. From my experience in working with blind professionals it is evident that higher a blind person’s professional qualification and ability to adapt is, the better he is also able to remain in the workforce despite his physical condition. The faster a person is able to learn new things and adapt to a new situation, the better he is able to function also despite blindness and physical impairment. It requires a certain amount of intelligence which I in this case interpret as the ability to do structured thinking and interpret symbols (e.g. letters) and patterns (written speech, calculus etc.).

Intelligence is shaped by upbringing, but also determined by genetic predisposition and even behaviour and nutrition of the mother during pregnancy. People who have been disadvantaged from the start need an extra uplift to excel professionally. Shaping averagely and below averagely intelligent people for the information society is a very tough job, most of all now when increasingly all simple manual jobs are done by machines (at least in highly technologized Switzerland) or outsourced to cheap labour countries.

Due to this development many poorly qualified people are falling out of the workforce and after a Kafkaesque journey through jobless benefits and disability processing are finally ending up in welfare. If nothing is done to improve the situation of this part of the population, it will be the beginning of a welfare downward spiral, where more people will be dependent on government benefits and fewer people will in turn be paying into benefit systems to support them. Are we ready to face a collapse of the benefit system and how will a post-benefit world look like? Like the slums of Mumbai or the favelas in Rio?

So what to do with these people, when integrating them into the normal workforce is not possible? Not everybody can be a rocket scientist and even formerly simple jobs like the supermarket cashier today demand operating a computerized scanner and fixing problems with it.

Switzerland and Germany are today trying to lift these people up by giving them new qualifications in the creative field, where machines can’t do the work yet.
Intricate hand carved toys for an affordable price, tattoo studios mushrooming up all over town run by jobless (unfortunately also not very talented…) youth, cafés etc. The area of subsidized work is growing exponentially at the moment. Ever wonder why jobless rates in Switzerland and Germany are so low? Whoever is not fit enough for the usual workplace is transferred to do subsidized workplace in order to get state benefits in lieu of a normal salary. Is this a new form of state labour, a Reintegration-Kombinat or the first step in giving poorly qualified people a second chance in the proper market? Will in the future, in the event of singularity, 80% of people do subsidized work and only 20% of highly skilled scientific workers / artists / artisans do work with a free salary and the freedom to spend money as they wish?

Your description of Swiss and German government employment efforts are very interesting. The current model you describe is analogous to the idea suggested by some in this thread- a society working to help a class of less able people succeed socially and economically using training and technology. The percentages-80 and 20-may be that, or may be closer to 99 and 1. They may get to 100 and 0 as machines eventually do both all the work and all the planning, with some of the 100% pitching in less and less as the machines become more advanced.

While it’s true that there exists today the human impulse among some to seek status above others and that this may be a genetic imperative, that does not mean that the rich will be *capable* of taking advantage and creating for themselves an unassailable lead. Consider this: today the rich have no understanding of the detail level work that is at the bottom of the hierarchical organizational pyramid – they have to hire consultants to do it for them. Likewise the consultants only have a vague idea. It is the organizationals as a whole that have power, not the individuals. Today we have a wide variety of expert systems and automated trading systems. The rich are in charge of such systems but have they become uber powerful? No. You have to imagine a jump from today’s technology to godlike technology in a single leap in order to be worried AND that the users are capable of levelling the competition and it aint gonna happen.

There is already a technological elite. There are people spending billions of dollars to build faster computers and network connections to bilk average investors out their 401K money. Perhaps in a few years the average investor will have access to this kind of technology but by then, the elite will have moved on to other, newer ways of robbing and keeping people under control.

This trend will continue well past the singularity. Those that can afford it will shape the post singularity “world” and will undoubtedly do so in a way that will not be good for those that arrive later.

Natural selection is a process of exuberant creation and ruthless elimination. The best practice in science and culture is a kink of negative pragmatism: find out what is not working and get rid of it.

your description of the world up to the Singularity may hold-I certainly agree that it describes much of this world, and parts of this country accurately. But Ray makes points in his essay section that make it very persuasive, without haveing to be a “Rayite” and just agree with what Ray says, that the post SIngularity world will not have the same dog-eat-dog, pre-modern agricultural history up to today paradigm of human interaction. That isnt a bullet point in one of his essays, its an essential part of several of them. The problem you describe may slow or stop progress to the Singularity, though, as “bad actors” who have national resources at their command may slow or stop open tech progress.

I think he’s being purposefully myopic here, or there is just massive cognitive dissonance that he doesn’t want to deal with. This is a real issue.

There is power disparity in the world. If you want to analyze power disparity purely in terms of exponential curves, by the time technology-x1 is affordable to a large percentage of of the population, the elite have access to technology-x2 and so forth. You would think that this exacerbates disparity, rather than alleviates it.

In criticizing Ray’s response, I think people are forgetting what motivates the exponential drop in price/performance, and thereby increases access to new technologies. The reason I can afford a smartphone today that I could not afford 2 years ago is because some people worked very hard to make it affordable to me with the goal of selling it to me. It is the same profit motivated business model that people are disparaging here that drives increased access.
Suppose the first direct brain/machine interface sells for $1,000,000 each. Do you really think the company that develops it will be content to sell it to a handful of people? You can bet they will look at the potential market of 6 billion and immediately start figuring out how to bring the cost down to expand their market. Because if they don’t, someone else will.

Kurzweil’s answer addresses the expected exponential – absolute – increase in power and capability that even the poorest and most disenfranchised of us will likely experience.

What he doesn’t address is the exponential – relative – increase in power that the elite will likely experience. The elite’s early access to technologies will enable them to widen the gap between themselves and those less powerful than themselves. You can see this in effect now.

Since most people measure power in relative terms to others (for good reason, since the relative power dynamic determines who can control whom) this will lead to greater concern and discontent for almost everyone (more then just 99% of us), because even current millionaires will see their power relative to current billionaires decrease exponentially.

Increased stratification of power has been shown in numerous inequality studies to have a negative effect on a nation’s general health. The important variable in these studies was the – relative – distribution of power.

It appears to me that it is your readership’s apprehension of the relative diminishment of their power that drives their interest in this topic.

Michael, you start out paying attention, not to economics and technology, but to politics, …in particular you discuss politics with reference to “class”, without using the word. When you say “…the relative power dynamic determines who can control whom”, you are speaking politics. Control is political. When you say “The elite’s early access to technologies will enable them to widen the gap between themselves and those less powerful than themselves …” you express yourself in relation to an elite “class”, that controls, or attempts to control, others.

In stating that relative wealth differences are growing, you are only looking at countries where relative amounts of concentration of political power is growing, …the US, the EU, and others, where more laws, that elites can manipulate, are being put in place. In countries in “the third world”, where such laws are being removed, the opposite is happening. *Both* sets of polities are being exposed to new cheap technologies, relative to what they had before. But it is only the one set, where the percentages of wealth manipulation through government is growing, that is seeing the shift you describe. Even where laws benefiting elites are being passed, their position is becoming more precarious, through technological acceleration, even where the laws still determine the direction of change, so far.

Elsewhere the trend is the opposite. People are catching up to their elites, from a *very* low starting level. This seems to be helped by the new technologies, in that the remaining monopolies of the “Third World” countries affect them less. They are both outside the original vision of those monopolies, and they help in growing the local market and intellectual networks in contact with those of worldwide industrial society, that will allow those people to generate more wealth.

As technological acceleration continues, I would expect that passing laws will be unable to keep up with the level of change from technology, to maintain control, though the pols are trying hard. We already live in the era of “We’ve got to pass it to find out what’s in it”, that still took 12+ months to cook up. When technological generations’ lifespans drop below 12 months, we will be, as the military say, “inside our opponent’s OODA loop”. As technology evolution continues to accelerate, and more avenues for investment in it open up (Crowd-funding cannot be delayed forever by the SEC rule makers) we will see horrid cries over their loss in their ability to benefit us, by restricting us, …while we go on to greater freedom.

We are all just reasoning with the unknown, which allows for equally valid predictions in any direction.

By definition, human nature would be wholly transformed by the arrival of the Singularity. Our concomitant desires for power and wealth, which derive from the present human condition, would change as well.

Emotions are nothing but a primordial form of intelligence (not necessarily negative). Some aspects of emotion are useful.
I don’t think emotions will be removed. They will be transformed, or even amplified when our brains are uploaded.

Ray’s basic message is that technology doesn’t stagnate and asks us to consider the implications.

This quote is taken from “Starting Point,” one of my books (a work in progress):

“In one of the early versions of this book, I typed on a foldout keyboard that plugged into the wall. Connected to the port at the center of the keyboard was a Dell Axim PDA (Personal Desktop Assistant.) Smaller than a laptop, its processing power still made my very first computer seem to move like molasses. The PDA and all its pieces folded up and fit in my coat pocket. This mini gadget was quantitatively ten times more powerful than my original computer, which I had a hard time fitting in the corner of my room. Only nine years separated these two devices.
More revealing (perhaps, I should write “Moore revealing”) is the comparison of first generation computers to today’s market. A 1950s disk drive came with these impressive specs: a five megabyte capacity, cost $160,000 (in today’s dollars), weighed about a ton, and was small enough that you only needed a forklift and cargo aircraft to move it. Compare that to today’s hard drive: coming in at a whopping 1.5 lbs is 1TB of storage (200,000 times as much information) which will cost you about $100 — 1600 times cheaper and astronomically smaller.”

The elite will do what the elite will do and probably little we can do to stop them so no use whining about it. However, at what point does it become ridiculous for the elite to withhold technology from us? I mean, if I had the PDA (mentioned above) thirty years ago, it’d be a hot item. Today it’s junk. In it’s heyday, the device was sleek (and fit my needs well.) An even sillier comparison: ask yourself if ‘the elite’ would stop me from owning a five-megabyte hard drive today.
The technology that allows for all the cool singularity stuff we imagine (transcendence, mind uploading, human level AI, super human AI, brain/computer interfaces, nanotechnology, etc.) will not be at the cutting edge forever. Post singularity, massive increases in efficiency will occur in much shorter amounts of time across all technological fronts. It won’t make any sense nor will it be worth the effort for the elite to withhold these techs indefinitely.

Of course, the REAL question we all have (in the back of our minds) is ‘how can we all just get along’ long enough to ALL make it through to the singularity, where presumably, we all ‘just get along’ indefinitely?

Its kind of tiring to think about (what with my retirement being in question, and mom and dad getting older, etc.), but I would like to get to the singularity eventuallly.

Maybe we could forge a new religion based on ‘everyone alive making it to the singularity’, then perhaps we could all make it. Disease, murder, slavery, terrorism, ‘excessive wealth acquisition’, all other forms of tribalism, mental illness, (insert your primary concern here), could simply fall away as ‘rationality in the pursuit of valuing plurality of existence’ wins out.

I have said it elsewhere…. in the Singularity kindness and generosity will be our way of living. Want to be part of the Elite? Be kind, be Generous. Judeo.Christian ethics. And at this point I would like to direct you to Argentinian Economist Bernardo Kliksberg recognized around the world as the founder of a new discipline, social management, and a pioneer of development ethics, social capital and corporate social responsibility.

I stand with you, bro, in hoping we get that Singularity. I don’t face your personal pressures. I got lucky with some decisions years ago, and while no where near the 1% am not worried, and unless we have a societal disruption (massive war, massive terrorist attacks on many cities in and out of America that start several big wars, many other bad possibilities) that interrupts international cooperation on tech advances and or shuts down open development, then tech development should progress as Ray sees. We can hope Ray is correct on his timeline. Good luck keeping your situation sane and safe in the meantime.

What Ray and the rest of you are failing to realize is that as the elite cognitively enhance themselves with a super AGI, brain-computer interfacing, or whatever other method you want to envision, they will use this power to prevent others from gaining access to it. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Anybody remember the Star Trek episode “Where No Man Has Gone Before”? That’s the kind of scenario we’re talking about here, except there’s not going to be a Captain Kirk to stop “Gary Mitchell” from obtaining transcendental, godlike powers and remaking the universe in his own image (as well as destroying the rest of us.)

Because of someone or something like Gary Mitchell, HAL-9000, Skynet, or Guardian-Colossus, this “singularity”, if it ever does happen, is going rapidly make the rest of us extinct, or to quote the late Heaven’s Gate cult leader Marshall Applewhite, “recycled”.

I prefer Robert Caro’s take on the matter: Power doesn’t always corrupt. Power can cleanse. What I believe is always true about power is that power always reveals.”

Certainly power can corrupt, we’ve seen plenty of examples of that through history – but it doesn’t always do so. Power does not corrupt when it is held in check. Any degree of power one has over another may be stopped by a higher power (I’m not being metaphysical) or by realizing we are connected. Awareness and super-morality are not reserved for the poor and powerless. It is likely that vast intellects also develop increasingly vast morality. I don’t believe in the benevolent butlers I.J. Good envisioned, but neither do I see the elite wiping us out.

Well Gabriel, I’d only point out that not all humans step on ants. I certainly don’t. (With respect to an ant, I am ultra powerful.) I have, on occasion, left Oreo’s on ant hills. On the main, I understand that many humans step on bugs. Not everything with great power over something else will exercise that power in a negative way – though that’s exactly what Mark is getting at with his all-inclusive statement. The Elite and Super AI’s won’t necessarily crush us under foot – those who don’t will probably wind up leaving us some Oreos. :)

You may not step on them, but what if an ant hill is right in the way of the garden you want to plant? Or if the field your food comes from has pesticides sprayed all over it? It is very easy to distance cause, effect and morality.

As Lincoln observed, “If you want to see a mans true character, don’t give him adversity, give him power”. Indeed, we see the character of the powerful all over the map, from FDR to Stalin in calibre. It’s a mixed bag but certainly has its share of Stalins, Hitlers, Khans, PolPots, Husains, Sauds, on and on and on. Some of the worst ones work in retail.

If you live in an enlightened part of the country, you can see where Ray’s optimism has its roots. What I fear, is what George Carlin’s average “Fing” stupid person who fears the Singularity and does everything in his or her power to stop it.
The fundamental question to me is who gets to decide? If these decisions are left up to politicians, our chances of experiencing the Singularity dim. If it is a purely a business decision, this also looks grim. What needs to happen is an outcry of citizenry to establish a “won’t take no for an answer” mindset so that both those in government and in industry cannot freeze out the common man.

The question is not if, it is when. No matter how much resistance there is, whatever technology permits will be realized. History testifies to this. Even though Babbage invented a mechanical general purpose computer 100 years before the transistor, even though he was unable to build it, the demand, and the results of human innovation overpowered any sense of obscurity or impracticality of the technology. Shannon even took up the idea of building an electronic device for ‘analysis’ out of relays around the turn of the 20th century and he proceeded to develop a language to represent the configurations of relays that would constitute such a device. Biologists, geneticists and information theorist are currently developing a language for programming biology. It is only a matter of time.

When we vaccinate, we program the immune system to recognize a class of bacteria or virii that we call pathogens. From that simple beginning, we have programmed simple cells that we have created to act as simple switches, analogous to transistors. We’re getting there!

Ray’s response is well rehearsed but wholly inadequate and stubbornly utopian in my estimation. 15 years may not seem like a long time but imagine the advantages the (wealthy) early adopters of a technology have accrued by the time the plebs have caught up, not to mention the fact that, by this time, the cutting edge, and hence the advantage, will be somewhere else, therefore still only in the hands of the elite. One may indeed receive a ‘perfected’ version of a technology long after its genesis, and it is true that, ultimately, it is to everyone’s benefit, but the people who will be able to exploit it will be those long familiar, not those belatedly catching up. Even today the right technology, and more importantly, the right technologically based skillsets, afford a real and significant boost in the hunt for decent employment. The problem is that tech heaps advantage upon the already advantaged and therefore cannot but adversely effect social mobility at an individual, as well as on a geopolitical plane.

This is spot on. William Gibson said that “The future is already here — it’s just not very evenly distributed.” After the first few achieve exponential closed loop self improving technology, how is anybody else going to compete?

Assuming that the singularity occurs as predicted, there will inevitably be those who wake up one day in a whorl wind of technological advancement. Strange, inexplicable events will overcome them, perhaps in the form of war, perhaps in the steeps of some profound, singular, evolutionary event, that being some combination of AI and biology.

Many folks have already experienced the nuances of this phenomenon over the span of the past decade with the coming of such distinctly minor events as the internet and mobility. In the near future, supposing a radical acceleration occurs, the effect will certainly overwhelm if not relegate these folks to obscurity, considering that said folks may choose not to actively ‘connect’ or participate in the advancements, or by default may be unable to participate.

Will the technology itself recognize the effect that it has on ordinary people? Assuming that ‘people’, either enhanced or otherwise will not be explicitly at the helm of AI, for example, will the AI display a kind of compassion, an understanding? Will any AGI be capable of understanding some distinctly human phenomenon which it is not a part of by definition?

It seems a strange question as we are here pondering these things from our side, assuming that we would model AGI on the workings of our own brains, but the very obscurity of the answers to the questions that we ask are cause for concern and consideration of the inverse perspective. More over, the real issue is that we ourselves have difficulty apprehending the concerns, the experiential attitudes of the ‘other’ in the case of people considering the perspective of other people. These are very important questions concerning the singularity.

Nicholas Necroponte once said, “Information wants to be free,” when the Internet was new in the mid-nineties. I believe that Ray’s childish optimism will die a heartbreaking death when human nature bangs its head against the metal wall of technology and shatters itself to pieces in an attempt to control it.

Way to bite the hand that feeds you. You are here on Ray’s website learning about a wide array of new technology and he has graciously answered a legitimate question which, he has already answered in TSIN. He doesn’t claim to have all answers to all questions as precisely worked out as you may want. He is giving you a way to think about the answer to the questiion. If you have a different idea about it, then share your idea. There’s no need for ad hominems.

Hi Ray!
I foresee that the 3 D printers have in their move to the next step autotrophic 3 D printers, where all of their potential power function is defined by the resonance mechanism of energy conversion lowly inert substance in a highly organized energy of living matter, and perhaps under the influence of solar and cosmic radiation. There is no doubt that in autotrophy 3 D printers you will be able to find a mechanism to transform not only the inert matter into a living, but living matter in the social, as a result of which a new autotrophic people.
Good luck Ray, and you will be the best in the choice of the potential singularity for all mankind!
Sincerely,
Alexei Kulai

I certainly hope that Rays turns out to be correct, but looking at the track record so far, does not instill much hope. The children of 1954 were told they would have hydrogen fusion power that would be “…too cheap to meter…”, but we don’t hear anyone talking about deflating energy costs today and fusion is still a dream.
One of the outstanding characteristics of the past forty years has been the concentration of wealth and power into the hands of a shrinking percentage of Elites.
Our advancement to this point was not without prediction in the 60′s and 70′s, but the clear failure of those forecasts are apparent today, as hours worked have increased rather than decreased while incomes (of the majority) have stagnated. The current trajectory seems just as likely to achieve a Singularity for the Elites, while the masses are discarded as obsolete machinery. Since Ray is part of that Elite, he has nothing to worry about, but his audience might want to consider how many people are rejected before American Idol chooses its Top 10. Those 80,000 “losers” aren’t like to enjoy much of a musical “Singularity”. Neither are we.

…I was reflecting on the comments of the cell phone from Ray…. I have no home phone now…. my old monthly bill for a home phone back in 1987 would be about $30/month. Now I have the latest smart phone every 2 years… with my wife’s plan and the data bundle, etc… I pay about $100/month, plus I pay the $200 phone cost (x2 as my wife needs the new iWhatever also). 2 year total bill is about $3,500, so I am paying about 3x what I used to pay (not adjusting for inflation of course), but interesting that my perception is that $99/month is not really on my radar of concerns or high expenses. In part I just need a cell phone…and it gives me email and data and movies and games and phone and tons of other cool stuff, so of course it is worth it (in perception). But if you asked me to buy my next cell phone and the guy said, here is your 2 year contract, it is $3,500 and you pay over 2 years, I think I would snap, or go off on the salesperson… I was thinking I am anything but moving toward free for my cell phone….. but then I overhead one of my employees’ talking about their use of their iPhone4s (same phone as mine btw) and they had no monthly bill. They used their phone on wifi and got “free” wifi at work…. at home…..at all the places they went to lunch at work and weekends….they used skype, so for them their monthly bill was very close to zero. Anyhow, had me thinking about the variety of perceptions out there (vs. facts) and there are many systems out there where we are not maximising our opportunities…..and in this case I started thinking maybe Ray’s free cell phone example was totally false for me….yet totally true for my employee.

…..Ray also commented on 3d printing…making physical objects almost free in the future. I have the new replicator2 3d printer from makerbot and love it. I am sure Ray was focused far out in the future…. and clearly is not fair to judge 3d printing so early it its infancy…or to underestimate the garage designers and hackers of the future… anyhow had me thinking on how much I really believe this statement. I think it will change the game for sure… but like most subjects there is more to it when you get down into the details. My 3d printers only prints with plastics and is best with PLA. Imagine trying to make a toaster or a coffee machine with any future 3d printer. Sure the plastic case of the toaster or coffee maker would be possible right this moment, even though it would look ugly in comparison with anything you could buy for $9.95 (or less) from walmart today. We forget there is rubber and glass and metal and huge variety of parts to make a simple toaster or coffee machine…. Yes of course it is possible to have a 3d printer that does print in 20 different materials and can print objects pre-assembled…and yes the world will copy the plans of any device in the future to make this part as close to free as possible (assuming your time to print this is also free). But counting the cost of any 3d printer in the future….even the 3d printers that can almost print another 3d printer, you would have a tough time making a quality coffee maker for $9.99 and want to drink coffee from it… (yes, a hard time even in 10 years from now). What I think will happen is that the ability to print stuff that does not exist yet….so adding a modification to your 3d printer that also does something else will happen…. I think expensive new things will be kept in check as anyone can maybe run out and print their own Dyson vacuum cleaner and not have to pay the extra $200 for it when the parts only cost $20…so I think the overcharging of new/exciting products may be kept in check better than in the past… your perception may be they are close to free, but companies will find a way to sell you a service…. like sell you the cell phone service…and make the phone part feel like free….but when you look back and see your bill you somehow still spent the same, if not more (and yet your perception is that you got so much value, that you still love it. Yum this green apple jello is so good, can I please have another?).

GatorALLin
True both for your employee and for me. I am a tighter budgeter, and to spare Rays site from spot advertizing, wont say the brand but I only pay a small cost quarterly for my blackberry style phone to keep it in service. Ray didn’t say that the african poor had the iPhone 6, he said they had android. And so does almost anyone in the world, and while I don’t think Ray claimed to be the psychohistorian from the Foundation series (Hari Seldon?) who could work out future history using math, he has pointed out that his very broad, non-company and non-specific product predictions have come true. I think he’s correct.

If Mr. Kurzweil’s answer isn’t sufficient, then perhaps more of us should engage in discussion, and write more about these consequences and how to prevent them from occurring. This issue is perhaps more important than the Singularity itself, and it would be shortsighted if not thoroughly analyzed from all sides of the topic.

A few important inventions could alleviate this concern somewhat. Yes, a 3D printer, but not only that, but one that can assemble objects at the nano-scale level. This printer MUST be able to print itself as well. Also, we would need a nano-disassembler, which can disintegrate any material down to its elemental components and sorted into containers (Hydrogen, Carbon, Nitrogen, etc). Then, an OPEN SOURCE database of printable components for printing nearly anything. Actually, everything should be open-source at that point. All three of these components would b e needed for some interesting things to take place. Oversimplified, but a potential solution.

We have reached the “Age of Revelation” when all will be known. This is a fantastic time to be alive! We are on the precipice of the Golden Space Age. And with the Golden Space Age… abundance for all. Prepare your mind for that.

I heard it asked before, could we have another Third Reich? Well, if the Stanford Experiment is anything to go by, the answer is a resounding yes. Rather than deny or rationalize in an optimistic way, I think we need to acknowledge our biological wiring and accept just how broken it is.

The us vs them instinct is still pervasive though human culture – whether through the classroom, office politics and, yes, the government.

To borrow an anecdote from Nassim Taleb, a turkey thinks life is hunky-dory after 364 days and sees no reason for that to change – but it does in a big way. Our trouble is that we don’t believe what we can’t conceive.

The phone example, while visual and compelling, is tackling the question far too lightly. I respect the busyness of his schedule but saying the adoption of phones is comparable to ultimate equality is saying the turkey’s alive after 364 days, so it must be alive after 365.

The phone example was good, because it shows that the uber expensive iphone that has only penetrated the rich or upper middle class of most poor countries, the most of the much more numerous poorer citizens have access to android versions that give phone service, and sometimes the web. But Ray was just showing that advances will spread-he wasn’t saying either that all had enough “stuff,” or that all were about to have enough “stuff”in the immediate future. We can always despair about horrors of the recent past, but we don’t have to regenerate National Socialism to see those horrors again-for example, the Cambodian variant of communist party-socialism (as opposed to National Socialism) gives us a sick taste of those horrors, as a post-WW II country murdered almost 1/3 of their population. Humanity has the violent capability of old now married to modern manufacturing, education and management techniques. Happily, both secular humanism and various religions have led us to less violent governments. Lets hope we can keep the horror-story types of government from stopping the world from progressing tech-wise to hit Singularity.

Actually the exploitation of human by human is based on tasks necessary for production that could only be done by human beings as a general purpose tool. With eradication of the technological basis of such exploitation by the new intelligent technologies that Ray Kurzweil has been an advocate for, the very basis of such exploitation is increasingly removed.
Extrapolations of exploitative systems of the past to a society where the technological basis of subjugation of human by human are eradicated are unwarranted because they miss the very reason of exploitation in human history.
I have explained this issue in details in a paper in AI Journal entitled “Intelligent Tools: The Cornerstone of a New Civilizations”: http://www.ghandchi.com/353-IntelligentToolsEng.htm

As far as inequalities of accessing new technologies, Ray answered it here very accurately and there is nothing for me to add in that regard.
Also other phenomena such as using human organs as an exploitive practice by the rich especially in backward countries should be eliminated with the growth of tissue engineering making kidneys etc.
Moreover the issue of poverty and fulfillment of human basic needs can be solved neither by the capitalist economy nor by socialist models and new ways should be sought. Even in this regard Kurzweil has proposed ideas that as I have discussed in my article entitled “How to Fix the Economy” can be used as an alternative:

Ray, I think you are making the case that the much-maligned trickle-down econmomics actually works. The presupposion of Joseph’s question is flawed in assuming that human equality means everyone having equal, money, resources, strength, beauty, brain power, etc. Equality means everyone plays by the same rules. Society cannot promise everyone the same outcome for individual efforts, work, risk-taking, etc. or even the same staring point in life. The best we can do is to insure everyone has the right life, liberty and ownership of what they have worked for or rightfully acquired (“secure in their possessions”) including the fruits of our labor, ingenuity (intellectual property) and what is otherwise legally acquired (such as charity or inheritance). The poor we have with us always, relatively speaking; but progess requires that becoming relatively wealthy is even a possibility when using creativity, hard work and the exploitation of owned resources. If we take that away by the modern idea of equality (promosing everyone equal outcomes regardless of their contributions) then there will no longer be “technology… affordable only by the rich” because there will be no “rich”. Today’s “poor” in some cases have access to things that even royalty just a few centuries ago could not obtain at any cost. I doubt this could have happened apart from some form of free enterprise with property rights and rule by law rather than being ruled by rulers, gangs, mobs or chaos.

RE technology… affordable only by the rich” because there will be no “rich”. Today’s “poor” in some cases have access to things that even royalty just a few centuries ago could not obtain at any cost.
You are right. Today’s world (the near-Singularity era) allows more chance for personal success than any other time in history.

Yes, with one caveat. “Trickle down” was an insult by the Dems against Reaganomics, and contempt for Reaganomics was the shared view of mainstream Dems and Repubs. Reagan’s primary opponent (Bush the 1st) felt that way, and used “Voodoo economics” as his ridicule-term for Reaganomics. Obamanomics is much more accurately called trickle-down, as the only benefit to the nation is government payments-a trickle, when compared to strong economic growth.

“Ray, I think you are making the case that the much-maligned trickle-down econmomics actually works.”

Which is patently false, as history has shown and continues to show. Just look at the graphs of American household incomes by quintile or decile and you’ll see it plain as day – the rich are getting richer while the poor are stagnating. No part of technological development so far is proving able to even slow down this march of inequality. No supposed “moral enlightenment” of the rich is taking place that would make them push for redistributist or egalitarian economic policies. The problem is political and any true and direct solution must also be political.

Ray’s response was disappointing. The only answer to explain this is he knows, and cannot admit, the answer. Tech has always been the first method of social control. Technologies only become available to the masses when new and better takes its place. There is no alturiism in logic. When humanity is watered down by tech enhancements logic will rule and the surfs (smurfs) will no longer be necessary. When that occurs what Is left will redefine and create another, albeit smaller, surf class. This is only logical. The end is always the same, lost of humanity and the end of resources. The singularity is a dead end socially, ethically and doesn’t solve the most basic of problem, the deficiencies in the heart of man.

In his book, The Social Neuroscience of Education, Louis Cozolino states the problem succinctly: the majority of us are operating with the same brain that organizes tribal cultures. Our technologies are taking us too fast, too far ahead of what we can compassionately, intellectually and emotionally handle. I will be surprised if this turns out to be a good, sustainable thing.

cheese & wine. if Ray is 1st, he can tell those of us hanging around at that moment if there is something more than the physical atoms we know about. Is there something in the dark matter-energy unique from our math-physics paradigm. or are all the particles just like me, hanging around waiting to be more useful, say in an orange or a piece or quartz or a water buffalo. i hope to be around long enough to learn what is 20 billion and 500 billion light years away from right here. right here at this key board where i type. the me that is so important to mainly me, but all together we are actually pretty interesting. Ray is using what he has, what he is and for that i say Thank You Ray. And Ray himself may have acknowledged the point that eternal self awareness is an unknown commodity at this time. Thus the mechanical spider like devices in Spielberg’s AI marveling at the humanoid little boy at the bottom of the ocean. Oddly humorous that some version of creation have the gods making man or life out of boredom, out of looking for something to do. Who knew? Who knows.

@Max True but some human beings, even strong in character and stubborn in discipline will just don’t learn much when others will read with photographic memory or learn calculus in 2 weeks, this is a basic inequality in nature inasmuch as there are dwarfs and giants. Even Aristotle recognized it in his Politics treatise: some men are born just to be slaves!

In the long run, even those disadvantaged by Nature will catch up, provided they have the will to do so, but as for now, with the lack of true progress in education (or truly effective nootropic drugs) my terse comment still apply.

The economic ignorance in this discussion is stunning. Absolutely stunning. What many comments here, including the original poster, assume is that there really is something to Marx’s Theory of Labor Value. In the era of classical economics there were many theories of what value is. The Austrian school, for example, states that value is subjective and depends on the individual. Marx, on the other hand, said that value was comprised of the cost of raw material plus the labor to create a manufactured item from the raw materials. Anything above that was “exploitative”. Actually when you contrast Marx’s theory of labor value and the Austrian perspective, you start to understand how things like the Soviet Union was such a mess, economically speaking and why they couldn’t keep up with the West.

In essence you accept the fact that you’re a wage slave and your work is being exploited by some “moneyed” class. What you do not understand is social mobility in the modern age. Unlike the Victorian era, mobility is not limited to class or social connections. It helps, but it not needed. Bill Gates. He’s probably the most modern example of how you can start with just an idea and create an entirely new industry that’s worth billions of dollars today. If you do understand how he did that, then you can understand that the OP’s fear is unfounded.

New technologies will only make money for their discoverers if they are produced for the masses. New technology tends to be expensive for the first creators because, well, it’s hard to make something new both in terms of money and, more importantly, time. What you find, however, is that over time others copy the first creator’s methods, or they may find better or less expensive ways to do it and convince people to try them instead. You may even get many players in a market, at least at first. Then you start to see a die off as less efficient players are bankrupted. Look at the early PC market. We had Tandy, Amiga, Commodores, Texas Instruments, Apple, IBM, etc. all in the market. Who do we have today? Even giants like Intel, today, have to innovate because the market where they made their success is changing. Tablets are the new thing and who knows how that might change in the future. What we can say is that future electronics will have much more power and be much smaller than what has come before. They will also become less expensive. Computers aren’t only for the elite, why should any other form of advance technology be restricted to the elite?

Well seeing as your own knowledge on economics leaves something to be desired I’d like if you could to explain in more details what this “Austrian school of economics” represent in content qualitatively… On the other hand your knowledge of marxism is completely wrong. I think you’re conflating both use value and exchange value, while the rest of your logic follows pretty typical bourgeois economist logic.

Your limited insight into the USSR is expected as well, considering they did something never before in history, and it is debatable anyways that by the 30s they were hitting the point of no return, failing to suppress capitalist methods of production while juggling new ever more pressing contradictions internally and externally.

What you and Max seem to forget is that nothing can be done without someone else. The ideas of the self made man. You yourself say that creating anything “market-worthy” requires a decent level of capital and will most likely suffer many set-backs. Then even if we do assume somehow a poor working class woman or man can, on their own, continue to work low-wage jobs to maybe someday “save-up” to then be finally granted the “opportunity” to become more monetarily wealthy is absurd. Oh so then what.. maybe you’re in the minority of middle-class with some savings… I guess you don’t need another person in another field of expertise or industry for a particular material or resource? More abstractions from the modern Robinson Crusoe-inite.

I can go on and on and on… What about all the historical examples of companies buying out patents on new inventions and brushing them under the rug that are actually better for the consumer or progress technology, all because they don’t benefit their market share?

I think a big error most forget when theorizing about 3d printing is where and how will we get the resources to print these objects from? I don’t think the poor or working or even middle classes will be owning the factories or processing plants producing the polymers or nano-tubes necessary to construct complex and useful materials. I wonder who will be working the factories to produce the robots too?? Hmm…

IMO we need a global revolution. It is the only way to ensure a world of true ‘freedom’ and new forms and quality of democracy where we all will have access and benefit from new technologies- that will actually benefit as well from the new layers of social relations and new found creativity.

Robots will be manning the Robot production assembly like. And while philosophy and economics can be debated forever, Zeno’s paradox (from thousands of years ago, somewhere in the Greek peninsula or thereabouts in the Adriatic Greek colonized area) that convincingly explained that a tossed ball or shot arrow or thrown spear never reaches any target was easily debunked by trowing, tossing or shooting and noting contradictory empirical evidence. Fast forward: Reaganomics works, countries all over the world swerve from state control to less and prosper accordingly, and the economic theories in use in the Soviet world and the Chinese, Vietnamese, Cambodian, Cuban, Vietnamese and all other Communist countries all fail to the point of abandonment or continued horror and/or widespread weary despair. As soon as Ray or some other tech populist can introduce new benefits, more of us who want to voluntarily help others will be empowered to do so. And we can conservatively anticipate that widely available technical aides will be available to help the most apparently intractably poor. Then we can at least debate economic theory with a raised floor of expectations.

Social mobility is a myth. Show me a decent study from the past years that shows that what you say is true. All the studies I’ve seen show that the gap between rich and poor is widening and that the usual social equalizers (college education, for example) are no longer working.

Social mobility? Like a child of a visiting scholar from Kenya and a middle class white collegiate, who is abandoned by that father, has some childhood years in Indonesia as the son of that same mother and an Indonesian father, and is then brought up as an upper middle class resident of Hawaii before getting into a good California school, eventually graduating from Yale law, and years later getting elected as state Senator, US Senator from that state, enters the Presidency as a multimillionaire? Mobility indeed. Sergey Brin (Google), Elon Musk (Pay Pal, Tesla), Steve Jobs and Gates al came form middle class. A liberal media and academic class touts bad mobiility here; one or two conservative sites have bothered to flesh out what anyone who has spent five decades or so as an American knows-you can go quite far, and fall quite far. Its an up stairway, but the railing isnt trustworthy and people on the stairway will pull you down with glee. This isnt “Rah Rah” blind faith. I didn’t come amazingly far, but came from no contacts, no help, got some maturity, paid attention and I now have an OK life and retirement. I’ve seen many do better, and many trying. Its a challenge, but if foreigners can make it here, locals can.

PedroC,
While I don’t doubt you believe it, a lack of mobility in America is also a liberal talking point shared by Euro and American Libs. It serves to support the idea that America should follow Obama’s Euro style gov ideas (more bureaucrats, more regulations, more tax expenditures) to meet their mobility level. In fact, we do better, athwart lib studies and reporting. To wit:
“Americans in the top one percent, like Americans in most income brackets, are not there permanently, despite being talked about and written about as if they are an enduring “class” — especially by those who have overdosed on the magic formula of “race, class and gender,” which has replaced thought in many intellectual circles.
At the highest income levels, people are especially likely to be transient at that level. Recent data from the Internal Revenue Service show that more than half the people who were in the top one percent in 1996 were no longer there in 2005.
Among the top one-hundredth of one percent, three-quarters of them were no longer there at the end of the decade.” This from Thomas Sowell, athttp://www.creators.com/conservative/thomas-sowell/that-top-one-percent.html
This link (http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.trident.edu:2048/pqcentral/docview/1610839843/7B944B9B09734B97PQ/4?accountid=28844) gives you a Credit Suisse (Swiss) 2013-2014 world wealth analysis, on which you can look one or two pages down to see a chart wherein north America (US and Canada) have the larges household wealth change over any region of the world.
Another ref for this: Do People Save or Spend Their Inheritances? Understanding What Happens to Inherited Wealth. This can be found at the March ’13 issue of the Journal of Family and Economic Issues, pages 64-76. I got it athttp://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.trident.edu:2048/pqcentral/docview/1291977644/abstract/7B944B9B09734B97PQ/18?accountid=28844
The article notes that of the richest families passing on approx 4 trillion, half will be lost in 10 years. Thus, Piketty’s assumption that the wealthy are securely entrenched like imperial Chinese Mandarins is once again refuted.
Its much easier to find reports and thesis papers breathlessly telling a modern version of pre-revolutionary France decadence and despair. Its harder to find simple facts backing up what I read only on conservative sites, apart from the very rare mention of this in a conservative editorial article in a daily paper.

You are rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic. The American government (Republicans & Democrat) is deeply flawed, but some American citizens are outstanding. Manning, Snowden & Erin Brokovich (there was a movie about her) are high-profile examples. There are thousands of less high-profile examples fighting government and corporate greed. Their sacrifice should not be underestimated. They risk jail, self imposed exile (Manning & Snowden) and, at the very least, unemployment, peer group disapprobation, blacklisting, harassment, etc. Unfortunately, they are in a ‘Catch 22’ situation. The structures of organized government are required for tech development and any other options to the status quo will bring on a period of chaos and uncertainty.

Far from the Titanic, the US is the 1st Worlds most successful survivor of the most recent economic recession. The two next big economic players, Europe and Japan, are both floundering among greater taxes and regulation than Repubs desire, while Dems want more-as shown by Obama. While Russia and China and IS/ISIL/ISIS and Iran are directly and openly pushing conquest using directly violent means, the US is progressing even under a currently flagrantly incompetent national leadership because we don’t directly depend on structures of organized government beyond the military, police, and courts. A great strength of America is that even with great dissention, parties have the option to speak out with wide support, even when there is much organized opposition. And our general opennes to foreign input, whether of both illegal and legal immigrants or of foriegn thought allows us to benefit from the good while risking the bad. We take that risk, and so far its been a winning bet. Catch 22 refers to governmental rules that involve a circular argument that keep you in a kafkaesque miserable situation. The term comes from a novel by that name that described nonsensical governmental bureaucratic behavior by the American Army Air Force (the precursor to the Air Force) in WW II Italy.

I enjoy people’s ability to push reality under the rug and pretend to walk all over it, something Mr. Kurzweil has done in his rather unintelligent, backhanded answer to a very valid question. More and more, it seems that Kurzweil and his ilk are beholden to the very entities that wish to control progress and make it only available for the elite. His answer, which is essentially, “Oh, don’t worry, buddy, it will be OK, dontchaknow,” is canned, apparently uninformed at best, and disingenuous at worst. Much respect lost for Mr. Kurzweil in his blatant dodging of a very important question.

If/when it is essentially cost free to maintain the serfs I think the overlords will do it regardless of the lack of historical precedents. I mean, why not upgrade these lower level “machines” and take advantage of the added computational power

I see how Ray’s answer applies in our current economic paradigm, but I think Joseph’s question takes place in another. When humans become comparatively inefficient pieces of machinery in all fields of labor, they will either upgrade themselves or be replaced by superior machines. Currently it is monetary value that feeds the will of the slave class to build empires. When humans (and all of their necessities for survival) are no longer relevant, there will be billions of less people that will make economic sense to sustain. The new slave class will be machines and it will no longer many any rational sense to keep the masses fed and entertained. Unless we think that the ruling class will suddenly adopt some compassion for the surfs of the world (for the first time in history), then I believe we can expect a war to be waged. I consider it to be very unlikely that an elite class would allow the “inferiors” the technologically ascend to their level. When people seek to dominate and they divorce themselves from actually witnessing the suffering caused by their decisions, human empathy is bypassed. At this point no mirror neurons are allowing the person to see the others’ pain as their own.

I fear Ray is incapable of acknowledging the severe and pervasive political pathologies in our age. Every time a question skirts close to this topic, he provides us with a rote, seemingly evasive answer. I fear Ray is out of touch with just how skewed society has become.

How easy it is to say that from your comfortably high place on the social ladder, where you have the luxury of ignoring the Civilization of Human Rights, which is precisely an expression of our species’ _opposition_ to the barbaric methods of (primitive) evolution.

You have NO IDEA how low I am on the social ladder. Not comfortable at all! While I’m highly technically trained I’m also unemployed and in danger of dying out. How presumptuous and stupid of you. Yet I respect evolution and its implications. No whining here.

“Primitive” evolution created us. And now we like to think we are above it, but there is no evidence at all that we are. All species have a “right” to reproduce until they start starving to death. They don’t have any natural right to expect unlimited resources just because they can grow their numbers exponentially over short periods of time.

Optimism is open to anyone who considers Rays essays with an open mind. While I am predisposed to an optimistic science fiction future, I’ve read plenty of apocalyptic novels and some of them quite logically presented. Worldwide bad events have occurred, and of course can again. But I urge you to at least sample essay 1 in the essay section. Its not long, and quite persuasive. I say that as a very argumentative, devil’s advocate type of guy. AI augmented humanity has so many potential up sides as well as downsides, that unless some bad actor stops it, its a very different paradigm from the current (and extending back as far as we have record) dog-eat-dog paradigm.

Both inhumane human resources departments that indeed see people as resources, and inhumane self-proclaimed humanistic governments that butcher parts of their population while proclaiming themselves “peoples republics” should assess the functionality of their mirror neurons. Meantime, we in the 1st world are not nearly as oppressed as some think we are. Our “elite” by economic reconing have a turnover rate, both of hereditary money and new money. The social elite depend on what subdivision of social elite is under consideration. For President, VP or House Speaker (our top three officials, in order of succession if the prior dies in office) have come from different parts of the country over time. Roughly twenty years prior to Obama, Colin Powell was eagerly courted by both parties after the first gulf war, as all reckoned he’d be a shoe-in; so we’ve been open to a non-white President for a while. Rarified elite? Powell is quoted as noting that if his parents had emigrated to GB rather than here, rather than highest ranking military man, he might have risen to Sergeant Major (this is close). Our “elite” isnt as rarefied as many think, and each generation is getting less-so. Jimmy Carter really was a small town guy who got educated through his military career and got to the White House. Many of us, not just in America but throughout the world and at all levels, empathise and intently wish to do well.